It's been a long battle for Montreal entrepreneurs Nick Laperle and Adam Schwartz, co-founders of Sonomax Technologies Inc., trying to crack the consumer market with their hearing protection devices.
Now, Sonomax has made a breakthrough with the launch of a new-generation self-fitting earpiece, the V4, that can be fitted in four minutes. It is being test-marketed and is attracting international attention.
Though the V4 is aimed primarily at the elusive consumer market, it will also be sold to industrial, military, emergency and medical markets.
It should start yielding licensing and royalty revenue by the end of the year, CEO Laperle said. Sonomax has just licensed Racal Esterline Acoustics, a specialist in military audio equipment, to integrate the V4 technology into its own products.
But Sonomax's ambitions go further. It has invested $735,000 in a five-year research partnership to develop a "bionic ear" with Ecole de technologie superieure (ETS) in Montreal, the engineering school affiliated with Universite du Quebec. The program, costing $4 million to $5 million, is backed by federal and provincial agencies, and ETS.
"That'll be the summum for a world getting hungrier for noise reduction," Laperle said. "The bionic ear, based on our electro-acoustical technology, will combine hearing aid, hearing protection, cellphone and music player for an age when everyone has a smartphone."
About 100 million workers in mining, manufacturing, aerospace and transportation are exposed to hearing loss because of excessive noise, but the problem does not stop there. A new U.S. study shows one in five American adolescents face hearing loss because of heavy use of electronic earbuds for listening to music.
The 12-year-old Sonomax, formerly Sonomax Hearing Healthcare Inc., established its basic hearing protection technology several years ago in the mining and industrial markets, selling earpieces to companies such as Alcan and BHP Billiton.
But efforts to reach the mass consumer market were stymied because a trained technician had to ensure a perfect in-ear fit. This raised costs and met consumer resistance.
Last year, Sonomax was restructured as a product development and licensing company, with an infusion of new capital. It sold its manufacturing assets, cut staff and completed the V4 "Soundcage" self-fitting earpiece.
"The customer can fit the V4 in four minutes," Laperle said. "Consumers will buy the earpiece in a box at a retail store, just like a cellphone. The key is the perfect fit that keeps out all unwanted noise."
The earplug is inserted in the ear and then injected with silicone from a headband to fit the ear canal's exact contour.
The inside earpiece containing the software is then added and the headband discarded.
"You press the headband's magic button to release the silicone," Laperle added. "The earpieces are ideal for earphone and Bluetooth devices."
There is competition out there, but the V4 offers superior value and performance besides simplicity, he said. "We want to set the industry standard for all in-ear products with a device that competes at the premium end of the consumer market."
The V4 helps those who like to listen to music while running or at the gym, and find it annoying when the earbud falls out, one analyst said after trying the earpiece.
Laperle said Sonomax hopes to conclude several manufacturing and distribution deals before the consumer market rollout by year-end.
The ETS partnership, aimed at developing advanced products for the "bionic ear," will let Sonomax outsource costly and time-consuming activities to ETS and its highly qualified research team.
It will be led by Jeremie Voix, an expert in acoustical filtering and digital signal processing. He is a former head of technology at Sonomax and helped to develop its industrial products. Sonomax staffers are already working with ETS researchers.
"People are often embarrassed wearing a hearing aid, but the bionic ear will be like a piece of jewellery, using miniaturization and other high-tech advances," said Laperle, a lawyer by training whose family ran a hearing-aid business.
"The first product will be a smart earphone in 2011. Our goal is an earpiece that gives people perfect control of the sound environment ... my original dream come true."
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